by RICH CASSIDY on FEBRUARY 8, 2012
I am an unabashed fan of the American Bar Association. It makes sense that I would be. After all, I have been a member of the ABA since 1979 (the year I was admitted to the bar), a member of the House of Delegates continuously since 1999, and for three of those years, 2005 through 2008, I was a member of the ABA’s Board of Governors.
I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in the ABA and I am acutely aware of the unique and important contributions the ABA makes to the legal profession, the legal system, and to the public at large.
The ABA really is the national voice of the legal profession, and if you think about it, no other organization could even hope to supplant that role. It is very important indeed. Lawyers understand the rule of law in protecting and improving our constitutional democracy in a way that few others are positioned to fully appreciate. Those of us who are litigators see it play out in court day after day. Even lawyers who have never seen courtrooms, think about and plan for their clients, based largely on judicial opinions. The ABA that stands up for the rule of law day in and day out.
So usually, I come away from an ABA House of Delegates meeting and report in these pages on the most significant resolutions adopted — or even rejected — by the House.
I could write the usual report from Monday’s meeting and tell you, for example, how pleased I am that the House endorsed UELMA, the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act. And I am pleased that it did so.
But the resolutions we adopted are not the dominant impression that will be left with me from our 2012 MidYear Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Instead, my recollections of the business of this meeting will be dominated by a report we merely received, one of a series of longer informational reports intended to give background to the House membership on matters not before it as action items, called “Issues of Concern to the Legal Profession.”
A perfectly nice, and as far as I could tell, well-intended lawyer named John F. O’Brien, delivered the report on behalf of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. O’Brien is the Dean of the New England College of Law, in Boston.
Dean O’Brien explained that the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the has a unique role to play. It is the entity designated by the United States Department of Education to accredit United States law schools. As O’Brien put it — and he is right about it — ABA accreditation is the gold standard for law schools. In most states ABA accreditation is the prerequisite that determines whether a law school’s graduates can take the bar examination. The bar examination, in turn, is the gateway to entry into the legal profession.
All that means that when it comes to law schools, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is extraordinarily influential. Fundamentally, what the Section requires, the law schools must do.
With all that that authority comes controversy. As the Dean mentioned, in the 1990s the United States Justice Department brought antitrust claims against the ABA because of it. The matter was settled based on a consent order that reduced the “guild” nature of the accreditation process, by taking faculty salaries out of the accreditation picture, and precluding consideration of a law school’s status as a for-profit or not-for-profit corporation in considering accreditation.
When I realized that this meeting’s “Issues of Concern to the Legal Profession” was from the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, I hoped that the Section would announce that it had come to a bend in the river, and that it would use its substantial power to require a new, more practical direction in American legal education.
I was disappointed. Dean O’Brien mentioned some of the events that I think as harbingers of major change in legal education. He explained that Villanova Law School recently had to correct data describing the qualifications of its entering class. He acknowledged that more than a dozen law schools have been sued based on allegations that they falsified placement data about graduates. And he mentioned (but not by name) litigation recently filed by Dunkin Law School in Tennessee against the American Bar Association, challenging the ABA’s denial of accreditation.
But he did not say that a new day in legal education is dawning. In fact, his report sounded more like business as usual.
For as much good as the ABA has done, it’s often not been at the forefront of needed change. This is one instance when its leadership should look hard at what role the Association wants to play: defender of a tired status quo, or standard bearer for a better future.
New Orleans is, of course, an exciting and interesting city. A record 4,526 registered participants attended the MidYear. I hope at least a few of them left as disappointed as I did with our Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Rich